by Alexia Adams
“It’s too hot to sleep at the cottage.” His brain had ceased functioning at the thought of Maya leaving so soon. There was still a plethora of things he wanted to do with her.
“I can survive. Besides, I like it hot.” She shrugged as if it made no difference to her.
He put his glass down, walked over to her, and stared into her mesmerizing eyes. Who needed cognac when you could drown in her gaze? “Don’t think about my grandfather. Don’t think about me. What do you want, Maya?” If she stayed, it had to be because she wanted to. Anything else was cheating. Although his body would argue otherwise.
She took a deep breath then leaned over and removed her shoes, tossing them under the table where they’d had breakfast that morning. “I want to stay.”
His breath whooshed out on an audible sigh. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
“And I want to stay here. In this room. With you. Do you have a problem with that?”
He reached out and caressed her cheek. His hand slid into her hair, drawing her closer. “I was hoping you’d say that, too.”
“And seeing as there’s so much room, I thought Princess could join us.” The sentence ended with his lips on hers.
He nibbled his way across to her ear. “No way. There are things I want to do to you that Princess might misunderstand. When you scream my name in pleasure, I don’t want your dog to get the wrong idea and attack me.”
She leaned back and stared into his eyes. “Intriguing. But I don’t do bondage. Once you’ve been handcuffed and tossed into the back of a cop car, the titillation goes out of the whole being restrained thing.”
“I’m not into that either. I prefer full partner participation.”
“Then I think we have a deal. Will you help me out of my dress?”
“It will be my pleasure.”
“Our pleasure,” she said as she spun around, presenting her back to him.
He slid the zipper down the back of her dress, undoing the hooks of her bra on the way, because he was efficient like that. Within seconds she stood before him, wearing only a black, lacy thong. He reached out to touch her, but she backed away.
“Your turn. Give me your best Magic Jacques impersonation.”
“What?”
“Strip for me. Preferably to music.”
She sauntered over to the bed, exaggerating the sway of her hips as she removed her thong. When she lay back against the pillows in her glorious nudity, he swallowed. “I don’t have any music up here.”
“Not even on your phone?” She lifted her hair off her shoulders and let it fall again before stretching her arms out wide. He couldn’t take his eyes off her full breasts. A lock of hair curled around an already taut nipple. Dieu, this woman was going to be the death of him.
“It’s a piece of business equipment. Not an entertainment device.” His brain scrambled for options. The sooner he satisfied her demand, the sooner he could join her on the bed, sink into her delicious heat, and lose the precious little bit of his mind that still remained.
“I hope I don’t fall asleep before you get here,” she said. She stretched again, a huge fake yawn contorting her face.
He grabbed the TV remote, found the music channel, and scrolled through the selection. A trickle of trepidation ran through him. What if she laughed? But remaining uptight around Maya wasn’t an option. He wanted this affair between them to be fun, something to look back on and smile. So, if he was going to do this, he was going to do it epically.
He chose “Uptown Funk” and pressed play. His hips bopping to the beat, he danced like he hadn’t done since he was ten years old, if then. She giggled as he licked his finger and then touched his ass with a sizzling sound. But it was encouragement, not derision. The sound of her provocative laugh emboldened him and he strutted in front of her, giving the performance of a lifetime. It was damn hard to undo buttons when shimmying your shoulders. He had a new respect for strippers. Of course they had Velcro on their side.
As he tossed his shirt to Maya, she sat up in the bed, her gaze riveted on him, biting her bottom lip seductively. Her skin was flushed, a clear sign she was turned on. The awkwardness he expected, dancing in front of her, had evaporated after the first chorus. Adrenaline, passion, humor, they all combined to heighten the pleasure in the moment. If he’d been told a month ago that he’d strip in front of someone and enjoy it, he wouldn’t have believed them.
When he was down to his boxers and the song was nearing its end, he turned his back to her, then moved his ass in circles as he lowered his shorts centimeter by centimeter. Maya yelled and clapped as though he were Channing Tatum. When the last note played, he spun on his heel and spread his arms wide, revealing all. Dieu, the hot look in Maya’s eyes set his skin on fire.
“I knew you had it in you. Now I need you in me,” she said, her voice husky.
But he wasn’t done. He’d worked his clothes off, so he wanted more than just a quick tumble. This was a night he wanted her to remember for a long time. “Not just yet. I performed for you. I at least deserve a massage for all my hard work.”
“Absolutely. Lay down. I’ll get the oil.” She went to move off the bed.
“No, I get to massage you. And this time, you have to keep your hands off me. Think you can manage that?”
Her gaze raked him. He might have overestimated his ability to stay in control.
“Go ahead, make me say your name.”
“By the time I’m done, you’ll be screaming it,” he promised.
And she did, multiple times. Later they lay in an exhausted tangle of limbs while the air- conditioning cooled their sweat-slicked skin. Sex had never been this amazing. Anyone after Maya was going to be a huge letdown.
Merveilleux, Jacques. First you marry a woman who destroys your faith in that institution. Then you take a lover who ruins you for any other. He could picture his grave marker: Jacques Charles Henri de Launay, Comte de Vendee, celibate, miserable, end of the line.
At least he’d be able to look back on this time with a smile. The trick would be to make it last as long as possible. Getting the land back was about to take second place to keeping the woman. More importantly, he had to make sure his heart stayed clear of the negotiations.
***
Jacques put down the phone and scrubbed a hand over his face. He’d known the party would end soon, but he’d hoped to make it last until his trip to Moscow at the end of the week. But now he had to fly to Tallinn first and needed to leave early in the morning. Twelve more hours with Maya. How many of them could they spend in his room?
Except Maya was so busy organizing this maudit festival that she barely had a moment during the day for a stolen kiss. Although yesterday he had done her on the desk when she’d come in to ask him about the budget.
His desire for her was off the chart, or the hook, or the chain, or whatever the current slang was. Maybe this business trip was the chance he needed to get some perspective. Take a step back and see the situation rationally. Regain control. More likely than not he’d find out how painful going cold turkey from his Maya addiction was going to be.
He’d find her now and tell her about his revised travel plans. Maybe they could have a private dinner together. Grand-Papa would understand, probably even send up a bottle of champagne from his personal collection.
As Jacques exited his office, the first person he encountered was his grandfather.
“Jacques, Maya has had the most fantastic ideas for the festival. This is going to be an amazing year.” Grand-Papa was vibrating with excitement, his eyes bright, and a huge smile on his face.
Dieu, when this ended he wasn’t sure who was going to take it the hardest, him or his grandfather. “Grand-Papa, don’t put too much pressure on Maya. She’s not a professional event planner. Let’s just get this year under our belt, and then we can learn for future festivals.”
“You need to have more faith in your woman, son.”
Jacques closed his eyes. This had to stop. “She�
��s not my woman. You have to get it out of your mind that we’re a couple. She has her life, I have mine. They’re intersecting for a brief time, but soon she’ll leave, we’ll have our property back, and we can all go back to normal.”
“I don’t like normal,” Grand-Papa said then shuffled away.
Jacques turned to find Maya a few feet away, her face pale, the smile on her face faker than a Louis Vuitton bag at the market. She was so close she had to have overheard his last statement to his grandfather. He’d broken her rule about mentioning the land. Would she cancel the truce?
“Maya.” His voice turned husky just uttering her name.
“Hi, I … um … just wanted to check if it’s okay if I redecorate the ballroom for the festival. Nothing major, just a bit of paint and reorganizing the furniture. I’ll need to start now though if it’s to be done in time for the party.” She stared over his left shoulder. Her eyes, when they did flicker to his face, were sad.
“Do anything you want. Have the painters or contractors send the bill to me. I trust your judgment.” He ran his hand through his hair again. Where had the impeccable control freak gone? What next? Was she going to turn him into the irresponsible waster his father had been? This business trip was coming at just the right time to regain his perspective. Until then, however… “I was coming to tell you that I have to travel to Estonia tomorrow morning. How about we have a private dinner together then you can tell me about all your plans without Grand-Papa interrupting with more suggestions?”
“Sounds lovely, but I promised to have dinner with Michelle Boudreau at her house. She’s helping me, as she knows all the local businesses.”
Disappointment smothered him, making it hard to breathe. “Can’t you meet with her tomorrow?”
Maya touched his cheek briefly, but whereas yesterday the caress would have been followed by a kiss, today she stepped back. “We have to make several critical decisions tonight so we can sign contracts tomorrow.”
“I’ll wait up for you, then.”
“Whatever.” And with that she was gone.
Chapter 13
Maya surveyed the ballroom. The robin’s egg-blue walls and cream trim worked well with the splashes of burgundy she’d chosen as an accent color. She’d scoured the chateau and replaced the gold-painted furniture with dark wood pieces and moved the mirrors so they bounced light rather than blinded. Two weeks from today the room would be full of people, only a handful of whom she knew, celebrating an event she’d never been a part of. But with Michelle’s help, it was all coming together nicely.
They’d decided on a vintage theme for the ball, going back to the 1930s, before the war that had changed the family’s fortunes. Maya still had no idea what she was going to wear to the formal party. Nothing in her wardrobe was suitable, but she didn’t have the time or inclination to travel to Paris to go shopping. Hopefully, she’d be able to stay in the background and direct things from the sidelines. No one need even know she was there.
It was the lull before the storm. Everything was organized; all that remained was to fight the inevitable fires on the night. Right now her fingers itched to create. Organizing the festival had kept her so busy for the past two and a half weeks that she’d barely had time to miss Jacques.
What a lie.
She’d missed him every second. She’d checked her watch at least every thirty minutes to see how close she was to their nightly video conference call. And to add to her misery, she still slept in his bed. If you could call tossing and turning for hours sleeping.
Each morning she’d wake to coffee and a pain au chocolat on their breakfast table in the room. Jacques had said he’d left a standing order with Marie to bring it up for her.
“Aren’t you worried I’ll get fat?” she’d asked him.
“I don’t care what you weigh,” he’d replied with a typical Gallic shrug. “I just want you happy.”
But she hadn’t had time to get fat either. She’d been too active lifting dust covers and searching through attics and forgotten rooms. Had she been an antiques dealer, she would have had an orgasm at all the gorgeous, long-forgotten pieces she’d uncovered.
In her search of the house’s furnishings to redecorate the rooms for the festival, she’d discovered an emerald-colored bedspread and had the housekeeper change it for the overly ruffled one in Clarisse’s old room. The space was much less girly now, but for some reason Maya couldn’t bring herself to sleep in the bed where Jacques had made love to his wife. Even if the sex had been disappointing, according to him.
See, here she was, thinking about him again. Damn, the man had invaded every part of her. She had to reclaim herself before she had nothing to go back to when, as he’d said, their lives no longer intersected. It was still all about the land for him. And for her? Well, she wasn’t so sure what it was about anymore. Fun was morphing into more, and that was unsettling.
They were like two people waiting at the same station for trains in different directions. Eventually they’d part, but the key was to enjoy the time they did have as much as possible while still keeping their ultimate destinations in mind. Hers was supporting herself as an artist. And unless she got some pieces to show, that wasn’t going to happen. The log at the back of the cottage couldn’t carve itself.
She found Marie Dubois in the kitchen, fussing over Princess. At first Maya had felt guilty about abandoning her new pet with Jacques’s staff. But Princess had been supremely happy and spoiled rotten. Would the dog even come back to the cottage with her now?
That was one worry she needn’t have bothered with, as Princess raced ahead of her. She’d been back a few times since she’d moved up to the big house but mostly just to water her plants and check on things. She’d have to remember to get air-conditioning installed before next summer. If she were still here next summer. Her brother Sean hadn’t heard anything more about the trial and she’d been too afraid to search the Internet for any information. So she was living in blissful ignorance. Or at least she would be blissful when Jacques returned.
After opening all the doors and windows to air out the cottage, she wandered out to the eight-foot tall log she’d been working on weeks ago. She circled the massive piece of wood three times, stopping to view it from different angles. When she’d bought it, she’d envisaged carving a woman ensnared in grape vines. She’d thought maybe Jacques might want it for the winery. But she could no longer see that. She sat on the lounger, the same one where Jacques had kissed her senseless the night he’d taught her to taste wine.
Oh God, no. Not that. Why did her muse taunt her with the impossible? Because as clear as if the sculpting were already done, she saw a man with his arms around his pregnant wife. And now that she’d seen it, she could see nothing else. Would Jacques think she was taunting him with an image from his past? Or a vision for the future?
Her arms burned from wielding the heavy chainsaw when Princess’s sharp bark alerted her to the arrival of a visitor. Could it be Jacques home early? Her heart leapt. She shut off the chainsaw and clambered down from the ladder.
But rather than the tall, muscular form of her lover coming around the corner, the smiling face of her new friend arrived.
“Hello, Michelle. Were we supposed to get together? Sorry, I completely forgot.”
“No, we had nothing scheduled. I’ve brought someone to meet you. I would have called first, but at the chateau they said you were here and didn’t have a phone.”
“No problem. Is it someone who wants to be involved in the festival?” They already had everything arranged; accommodating another exhibitor was going to be a pain. But she didn’t want to upset anyone.
“It’s my mother-in-law. I told her about the festival and about you. Evidently, she was your great-grandmother’s best friend. She insisted on coming right away to meet you.”
“I’d love to meet her.” Maya stripped off her overalls and hard hat and followed Michelle around to the front of the cottage. There in the passenger seat of the ca
r sat an old lady, a huge cardboard box in her lap.
“She’s too frail to get out of the car, so if you don’t mind talking to her there…”
“Not at all.”
Michelle introduced them, yelling Maya’s name. “She’s deaf as a doorpost but too vain to wearing hearing aids,” Michelle explained.
“You have Yvette’s eyes,” Madame Boudreau said after searching Maya’s face.
“And her sense of humor, too, I’m told. I didn’t know Gran-Gran still had friends here, or I would have come to visit.”
“Michelle was telling me about this festival you’re organizing. I told her the best one the family had was when Yvette and Charles announced their engagement. It was a magical evening. People spoke about it for years.”
“Even more after Yvette left, I imagine.”
“Yes, that was a dreadful shame. Charles’s mother was so horrid to poor Yvette and convinced her that the best thing for Charles and the family would be if she left France and never came back. Madame de Launay even offered Yvette money, but she wouldn’t take it. Stupid, meddling old woman. She ruined two lives.”
“Are you sure? I thought Gran-Gran left because she fell in love with my great-grandfather.” Maya tried to connect the new information to what she knew of her great-grandparents’ marriage. Her great-grandfather had been a gambler who’d disappeared shortly after her grandmother had been born. Maya assumed Gran-Gran hadn’t talked about him much because she’d been embarrassed, not because she hadn’t really loved him.
“That was the gossip the de Launays spread. But I knew it was because they never approved of Yvette. Not that it mattered to Charles. He loved her so much. He didn’t care that she was the local baker’s daughter. But his family wanted him to marry money, as they were going through theirs faster than they could make it. The whole estate was on the verge of bankruptcy.”
“Truly, Mama? I never heard any of this,” Michelle said as her mother-in-law paused for a labored breath.